A memorial service has been planned for the wife of a former congressman who died Sunday at the age of 78.

Charlotte Brooks, who not only witnessed history from inside the rooms of political power but was a part of it alongside her cigar-puffing husband, was born Charlotte Collins on Aug. 28, 1935, in Rosebud, Texas. She grew up in Cameron, Texas, was a drum major for her high school's marching band and took a job in the mid-1950s for a Texas congressman from Waco, who was a friend of her stepfather's.

That worked into another Capitol Hill job with a Houston congressman. She was spotted by bachelor Jack Brooks, the Beaumont congressman who was 12 years her senior.

Charlotte Brooks definitely wasn't an ornament for a congressman who was part of legendary Speaker Sam Rayburn's inner circle.

Even then, relations among members of Congress were friction-filled and Charlotte Brooks, as a member of the Congressional Wives Club, helped keep open the lines of communication.

Later, she used her considerable skills to manage an occasionally cantankerous husband and then banking operations.

"It would have been very easy to be intimidated by her, important in her own right and also married to such an imposing man," said Laurie Ritchel, formerly an executive vice president at First Bank and Trust, the financial institution with a board of directors chaired by Charlotte Brooks.